same with much
humbler persons. He never failed, on his way to Philadelphia, to stop
at Wilmington and have a chat with one Captain O'Flinn, who kept a
tavern and had been a Revolutionary soldier; and this was but a single
instance among many of like character. Any soldier of the Revolution
was always sure of a welcome at the hands of his old commander.
Eminent statesmen, especially of the opposition, often found his
manner cold, but no old soldier ever complained of it, no servant ever
left him, and the country people about Mount Vernon loved him as a
neighbor and friend, and not as the distant great man of the army and
the presidency.

He believed thoroughly in popular government. One does not find in his
letters the bitter references to democracy and to the populace which
can be discovered in the writings of so many of his party friends,
legacies of pre-revolutionary ideas inflamed by hatred of Parisian
mobs. He always spoke of the people at large with a simple respect,
because he knew that the future of the United States was in their
hands and not in that of any class, and because he believed that they
would fulfill their mission. The French Revolution never carried him
away, and when it bred anarchy and bloodshed he became hostile to
French influence, because license and disorder were above all
things hateful to him. Yet he did not lose his balance in the other
direction, as was the case with so many of his friends. He resisted
and opposed French ideas and French democracy, so admired and so
loudly preached by Jefferson and his followers, because he esteemed
them perilous to the country. But there is not a word to indicate that
he did not think that such dangers would be finally overcome, even
if at the cost of much suffering, by the sane sense and ingrained
conservatism of the American people. Other men talked more noisily
about the people, but no one trusted them in the best sense more than
Washington, and his only fear was that evils might come from their
being misled by false lights.

Once more, what is it to be an American? Putting aside all the outer
shows of dress and manners, social customs and physical peculiarities,
is it not to believe in America and in the American people? Is it not
to have an abiding and moving faith in the future and in the destiny
of America?--something above and beyond the patriotism and love which
every man whose soul is not dead within him feels for the land of his
birth? Is i